O N   D E T A I L : Continued

Discovering Detail Jim Wilson

At the time, I didn't pay much attention to man-made detail, and just took it for granted. Everything I encountered was factory-made, I suppose. It was much later when my father took up fine furniture making as a hobby. My adolescence, though, happened at the same time that Hot Rod magazine first hit the magazine rack at the local drugstore. Suddenly, I was exposed to photos of these incredible handmade cars which were positively brimming with lovingly-crafted detail. Nowadays, street rods can be based upon just about any donor car, probably out of necessity. At that time, however, hot rodders were limited by convention to only a few basis cars: Deuce and Models A and T roadsters, coupes; and pickups; much in the same way that lowrider bikes are almost invariably based upon Schwinn muscle-bike frames, today. Back then, there were not all that many sources for off-the-shelf trick and performance components; so these heroes of mine had to pretty much make, or have made, most of the parts which set their cars off from factory iron. To differentiate them from others of their (extremely similar) ilk was mostly a matter of the details.  Since a hot rod was stripped down to the essential, very minimal bodywork (none of yer hi-boy-full-fendered-with- hoods crap for real rodders, back then.) the engine was the main decorative, and individualizing, feature of the machine. And what glorious decorative features they were! To this day, a fully tricked-out Ford Flathead V8 with finned cast-aluminum cylinder heads (painted red between the polished fins, of course), infested all over with little chrome acorn nuts, flanking a polished intake manifold sporting a trio of Stromberg 97s, chromed headers, polished wire looms, transparent red spark plug cables, and chrome everything else, is one of the most beautiful objects imaginable to me. I swore then, that when I was old enough, and had the money and skills, I'd build myself a hot rod, and I'd make or acquire all that sort of rich detailing for it, just like those T-shirted, greasy-jeaned machine-shop and foundry artistes whom I admired so much. I became quite impressed with the work of George Barris a bit later. He took the street rod concept even further: he kustomized them (his term) into luxe baroque show machines. The most specific influence of his work on my own creative processes was that he used stuff he found in hardware stores as detail elements in his creations. Now that was something I could relate to! My local hardware store carried exactly the same concave square chrome drawer pulls that he used in profusion to such rich effect in the radiator shell grille-work of his masterpiece "Ala Kart". Ever since then, when I browse through a hardware store, my eyes are always attracted to chrome-plated bits of utilitarian function; and I ponder how I could work them into one of my creations. That chrome-plated brass drain tubing they always have in the plumbing section is especially attractive to me, and has served as kustom fodder numerous times. Those circular chrome surrounds for shower pipes are another special favorite. Several of them went into the construction of the 2 much!!! trike, including what is probably my favorite detail of the whole thing: the speedometer housing. Its yoke, shell, and visor are hand-fabricated and polished aluminum, done by myself in the tradition of my early idols, but the rear cap, the key to the whole thing, is one of those $2 chrome shower-pipe surround trims. That one is the legacy from my all-time idol: George Barris, king of the kustomizers, and lord of the ready-made discovered detail.  J.W.

Attention To Detail Is Everything J. Frank Webster

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Quality: I know many of you have never been much for such esoteric subjects as philosophy and most of you don't have time to read the paper, much less a dense, fairly abstract book but what put it all in clear focus for me was Robert Persig's "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance", way back in 1975 or so. It really doesn't have much to do with actual motorcycle maintenance as it's mainly a philosophical treatise on quality and how we define it, observe it and recognize it and one of the main tenets is that even though we may not understand why it catches our attention, we (all of us) invariably recognize it when we see it. It is my opinion that extreme attention to detail is what we are really reacting to, whether we know anything about what we are seeing or not, it simply stands out. It's kind of like modeling,  you choose to add a few details at certain levels to give the overall model credability and realism: the mind wants to believe that what it is seeing is real, not a toy with a few trick pieces glued onto it and if you provide just enough detail, everyone's happy to honor the illusion. A form of Obsessive - Compulsive Disorder? When I build a show quality VW motor (my specialty), I know them all the way down to the very last nut and bolt, which routinely get replaced with polished stainless steel or black anodized hardware. I also know every nook and cranny on the engine cases; you have to clean and paint them in there. And above all, you are constantly thinking about how to make dog ugly stuff look good and to never repeat yourself (you don't want to bore your fans), it's at least a mild form of sickness in its extreme expression... Then there's plain old obsession, agonizing over just the right combination of nuts and bolts to set it off just right, decisions sometimes taking months to make over something as relatively simple as detailing out a pair of car horns, deciding which combination of polished stainless steel nuts and Allen head bolts to use to make it just right, taking years to sit and think and look at something until you are absolutely sure that you have arrived at the final design, all before you ever start doing it (I've had Taxetta for 15 years now and still haven't made all of the decisions so it sits there in the garage, mocking me, daring me to do something...). Another sign that you may be obsessed is when you wake up in the middle of the night with the solution to a problem that had been vexing you for quite some time or you find yourself sitting on or in your new project in the garage at midnight, both of which I must admit to... Inside / Out It's almost inside out thinking, from the smallest bolt all the way out to the final paint scheme, not the other way around. Sure, the style and engineering have to be there but if the detail isn't... And sometimes the process is so slow and glacial in speed that it looks like nothing is happening at all (almost all of the action is internal)  Finally, it's all a continuation of the previous experiment, based on everything you've learned and done so far, each project detailed out even more than the last, using every trick you've ever learned and inventing new ones each time out.

A friend of ours calls show cars with closed hoods or covers designed to hide everything "paint jobs" and the likelihood is that their engine compartments are also a mess. Another friend of ours who is an old time hot rodder with a degree in Automotive Engineering used to assign me "homework" when I first started to work with him. He would tell me to go out and look at tail lights only for a week, to write it all down or better yet, keep a photo scrap book for future ideas. Another time, he assigned me to look at license plate inserts like some of the small SUV's have in their rear hatches, sometimes with a tail gate latch and license plate light fixture designed into it. Another time it was bumpers. What he was doing was forcing me to sharpen my powers of observation, to notice the differences, to train my eye to see what's really there. A few years ago, I realized that many of the VW engine builders were putting out some very high quality motors with one exception: in the middle of all of that gorgeous paint, powder coat and chrome, the ugly, greasy engine block stood out like a sore thumb (I've powder coated one and custom painted several more so far). My next motor will be exactly the opposite as I plan to polish the entire block and clearcoat it. When you paint or powder coat a VW engine case (or anything else, for that matter), the only right way is to pull it completely down and remove everything, down to the last stud, clean it thoroughly, properly mask it off and then apply the color but a guy we know almost fooled us when he painted the area that shows in the engine compartment but not the rest of it (we call it a Scumbag Greg paint job). If you looked under the car, that same bare and greasy block was plainly visible but from above, it looked like he had went all the way. Detail is also doing it where it doesn't show (look at any Jim Wilson project) but you know it's there and you do it for you, not just to fool anyone else. As I said before, I am known for my show quality VW motors and a great example of attention to detail are my oil pump cover plates. I had noticed that no one seemed to ever do anything to them as they really only show in motors used in dune buggies and trikes and I chromed my first one. My second one was painted to match the rest of the motor, then I powder coated one, splatter painted another and did the powder coat with polished hot rod style aluminum fins on the last one I did. I know it's there and that's all that matters...    J.F.W.